Slaughter and May has made up two of its London associates to partner in the magic circle firm's 2013 promotions round.

James Stacey and Lisa Wright, both of who trained at the firm, will join the partnership as of 1 May this year, taking the number of partners at the firm to 117, with 106 based in London.

Stacey, who joined the firm as a trainee in 2002 and works in the firm's dispute resolution group, has a practice covering a broad spectrum of commercial litigation and arbitration work.

He advised a major media group in relation to the Leveson Inquiry, and has been part of teams working on tax investigations and related litigation, as well as several major international arbitrations in the energy, infrastructure and nuclear sectors.

Meanwhile, Wright (pictured), who began her training at the firm in 2003, joined the competition group after qualification and has gone on to build a mainstream competition and regulatory practice, representing clients including Royal Mail, the UK Government, Asda and Santander.

She has worked on mergers, cartels and regulated industries matters, based in both the firm's Brussels and London offices, with extensive dealings with the EU Commission, the Office of Fair Trading, and the Competition Commission as well as UK sectoral regulators.

"It was time for these two associates to join the partnership – they are both great candidates," said Slaughters senior partner Chris Saul. "Ability is the key driver of course, although it is also the case that dispute resolution and competition are busy areas at the moment.

"In terms of business trends we are cautiously optimistic for the rest of 2013. It remains a little bit patchy on the M&A side, but there has been a strong resurgence in equity capital markets, and financing, dispute resolution and competition remain busy areas."

The promotions will mean 95 of Slaughters partners are male and 22 female, 19 of whom are based in the City. Slaughters' total partnership size has fallen by eight – or 7% – over the last two years.

Last year the firm also made up two partners, with financing lawyer Ed Fife and Mark Hughes joining the partnership in London and Hong Kong respectively, while in 2011, the firm made up five – Michael Corbett, Paul Dickson and Adam Eastell in corporate and Ian Johnson and Richard Jones in financing.

Outside of London, the firm has three offices in Brussels, Hong Kong and Beijing.